


Chasing Stars

by diablo77



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, It's based on this song except I misheard the lyrics slightly, Masturbation, Oops, Songfic, Unplanned Pregnancy, so their ages are wrong because I heard "ten years out of high school" as "two years"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:45:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 11,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diablo77/pseuds/diablo77
Summary: When Cas learns that his childhood friend and longtime crush, Meg, is pregnant after a one-night stand, he sets out to convince her to marry him.(Human AU songfic based on Jason Isbell’s “Shotgun Wedding.”)Written for SPN AU Big Bang on Tumblr. Thanks to @daemonrose for the awesome artwork!





	1. Chapter 1




	2. Chapter 2

             Cas heard the car in the driveway next door – something with a loud muffler, something that sounded fast and dangerous even though he couldn’t see it. Folding the comic book propped on his chest closed, he sat up on his bed and switched off the light. The engine shut off with a shudder, and there was the sound of footsteps on the ground below. Muffled voices, a light laugh laced with alcohol. Cas lay still on the bed, barely breathing. Everything went silent for a moment, then he saw a square of yellow light switch on directly across the alley.

            Slowly rising from the bed, he crept across the floor until he was standing below the window, bending one of his blinds with a single finger. Through the gap, he could see Meg’s uncovered window across the alley, the shadow of a man he didn’t know hovering by the door as Meg laughed and slipped off her dress. The way her dark hair fell over her bare shoulders as she stood there in just a black lace bra and panties, the way she bit her lip as she looked toward the figure in the corner that Cas was trying to ignore… he shuddered, guilt twisting in his gut. When the man finally moved toward Meg, Cas forced himself to drop the blind, but he could still see their silhouettes through the cracks as their bodies pressed together and started moving. He stood frozen in place until Meg threw a shirt over the bare curtain rod in her window and her room went dark. As he tiptoed back to his bed, he could still hear the sound of her laughter.

            Cas slipped under his covers and kicked off his boxer shorts. Under the blanket, he wrapped his hand around the base of his cock as the noises from across the alley shifted to muted pleasure sounds. Sometimes he wondered if Meg knew he could hear her; if the obvious attempts to keep quiet each time this happened were for his benefit. Of course her father was downstairs, but he was usually passed out on the couch by this time of night. If it was consideration, though, it wasn’t enough – he always heard everything.

            He squeezed his eyes shut as he stroked himself, imagining the ways her body must be moving, the expressions that might dance over her face as she lost control. When she climaxed, he did too, coming silently into an old shirt he’d grabbed from the floor. He tossed it aside, disgusted, and rolled toward the wall, pulling the blanket over his head as if he could smother his shame with it.

            The Masters family had moved next door when Cas was in kindergarten. The father seemed spooky and strange to him, the older son cool and mean in a way that made him nervous, but he’d taken to the daughter immediately. Both pretty and tough, confident and outgoing, she was everything Cas was sure he wasn’t. She was smart, like him, but a different kind of smart: the kind who knew how to talk her way out of any jam and take down bullies with sheer wit, not the kind to bury her nose in books like him. He spent weeks following her around until she finally noticed and gave in to his constant longing for her friendship, letting him ride on the back pegs of her tricycle and teaching him to climb the tree between their houses. They never ran with the same crowds in grade school, but since they both lived on the rough side of town and the popular, rich kids ignored them both, it never seemed to matter.

           When they got older, their connection to each other became its own language, one that didn’t always even need words. Late nights, he’d slip into the alley and throw a handful of pebbles at her window, and she’d lift the sash and shimmy down the trunk of the tree to join him. They’d run off into the night, find one of their secret places to lie side by side and talk until it was nearly dawn and she needed to sneak back into her room.

          It was on one of those nights, when they were twelve, maybe eleven, that they’d kissed, a soft press of warm skin and limbs tangled together in the deep shadow of the woods beyond their houses. It was Cas’s first real kiss. He’d had what he could have called fake kisses, but those were all with Meg, too, in the games she liked to play. This time they were kissing for no other reason than to kiss, and Cas had melted blissfully into it until he felt the mortifying stirring under his skin that made him pull away too quickly, Meg turning toward the trees to hide her giggles behind her hand.

         Then they’d hit high school, and Cas had stayed with the theater kids and the comic book club while Meg started dyeing her hair and sneaking cigarettes under the bleachers, riding around with the boys in the fast cars after school. So many of those boys, their faces and their cars always changing, even now, two years out of school. There seemed to be something she saw in each one that made her excited. But for Cas, it had always, only been Meg.

            Now, Cas lay in his bed, watching the shadows on the wall until the lights across the alley went down and they disappeared. Even then, he stayed awake under his covers, not able to let go and fall asleep until just before dawn, when he heard the loud engine in Meg’s driveway rev up and spin away from her house.


	3. Chapter 3

            Some weeks later, Cas heard another loud car in Meg’s driveway, but this one he recognized; it wasn’t loud from big mufflers or a souped-up engine, but from all the clanging parts barely held together on the ugly thing. Meg’s best friend Ruby’s car. Cracking the blinds, Cas saw them both climb out of the car. Saw Ruby give Meg a long hug, longer than seemed normal. She said something he couldn’t quite make out, and Meg nodded before moving up her walk and through her front door. He waited for the light to come on in her room, but it never did. In the darkness across the alley, he heard footsteps, the creaking of bedsprings, and then what he realized was the undeniable sound of Meg crying.

            He lay back on his bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He remembered the moment he knew he loved her. Not just as his best and only friend, not just as the person who’d always been there, but as something new, something that made every cell in his body feel remarkably _alive._ It was the summer before high school. Cas had just inherited his rusty Vespa scooter from his older brother Gabriel, who’d graduated to a real bike, but he was still too young to drive it on the road; Gabe would take him out to the dirt roads past the county line sometimes, out where there was nothing but old factories and trailer parks and nobody cared how old you were if you could stay in your lane.

            They’d practiced, first with Cas uncomfortably perched on the seat behind Gabe, watching him shift and brake; then very slowly on his own, with Gabe shouting instructions from the side of the road. Finally, when they’d progressed to riding side by side, Cas on the scooter, Gabe on his “new” bike that was older than he was, Gabe had pronounced Cas “almost ready.”

            But nothing could have made him ready for what happened when they parked back at the house that night. Gabe had disappeared into the back door when Cas heard a familiar _thud_ behind him: the sound of Meg hopping the fence. He was surprised at the way his breath caught in his throat when he saw her. In one fluid movement, she swung her legs up and straddled the back of his scooter. Her body was soft and warm pressed into his, her breath tickling the back of his neck. “You gonna take me for a ride, or what?”

            “I’m not really supposed to ride on the road…”

            “And who’s gonna tell on you? Your brother? He’s probably already getting stoned. And your parents are around about as much as mine, which is to say never.” She had a point. “Come on, you owe me. After all the rides I gave _you._ ”

            “The rides you gave me…?”

            “You really don’t remember?” Suddenly, he felt the metal slats on the back of her tricycle in his memory, hot on his bare feet, so many summers ago. It had taken him so much longer than her to master the pedals. She had ridden like she’d been born with them welded to her feet. Something about movement, of any kind, always seemed to agree with Meg.

            In what may have been the most spontaneous move of his life, Cas put the sputtering scooter back in gear and eased onto the road, Meg squeezing his waist and laughing in his ear. He remembered everything about that ride: the fireflies that danced around them in the late dusk, the painted lines zipping past and blurring together, the way Meg’s hair blew around her face in the breeze they were creating. He drove her to the only place he knew on their side of town that passed for pretty.

            Down by the river, under the graffiti-sprayed pilings, Cas and Meg walked far enough down the shoreline that they were past the discarded beer cans and trash fires and it was just them and the trees and the black water lapping at the muddy banks. Someone had long ago tied a rope to one of the trees overhanging the water, and Meg grabbed the frayed end with a mischievous grin. “Dare you to swing out,” she said.

            Cas looked down. “With my clothes on?”

            Meg laughed. “Of course not,” she said. Before he could say another word, she was stripping off her T-shirt, kicking off her shorts. Still holding the rope, she stood in front of him completely naked, as if challenging him to look at her. He kept his eyes averted, pretending to be fascinated by the tobacco-brown leaves on the ground as she said, “Now your turn.”

            Sensing his hesitation, she stepped closer to him, teasing. “Come on, Cas, there’s nobody here but us. And it’s not like _I_ haven’t seen you naked before.” It was true, she had. All the times, when they were very young, that she had insisted on playing “nurse” and examining him. There was something about the way she’d explored his body, carefully, with fascination and something like reverence, that had made him hold his breath during their games, swallowing a rush of excitement he couldn’t name. He was never the one to ask to play, but he always secretly, desperately hoped she would.

            “That was different,” he said. “We were kids.”

            “We still _are_ kids. And this might be our last chance to do something stupid without everybody making a big deal about it.” With a frustrated sigh, she pulled back on the rope and jumped off the bank, swinging a wide arc out to the middle of the stream before letting go and dropping down into the water with a gleeful shriek.

            Cas darted a glance around him before disposing of his own clothes. He grabbed the rope, feeling its rough fibers scrape against his palms, and with a deep breath kicked off the bank and swung into the river with Meg. He knew from the sting of the landing and the way she laughed again that his dismount hadn’t been as graceful as hers, but he didn’t care.

            He watched in awe as she dove and splashed in the water, her body silvery like a slice of moonlight in the darkening air. There was that tightening in his chest again, and this time he was certain of it. This had to be love. Meg plunged deep below the surface and stayed there so long that the ripples she’d left in her wake had disappeared by the time she broke Cas’s trance by popping up next to him and spitting a mouthful of water in his face. She swam away, laughing, and Cas kicked up his heels to chase after her and splash her back, thinking all the while about how much he definitely wanted to kiss her. They’d done that before, too. But they’d been younger, and it hadn’t counted then. It would mean something different now. So he settled for catching her and throwing a shower of water over her, being rewarded by her shrieks of laughter ringing off the banks.

            His stomach sank as he remembered what had come after. He could never manage to savor this memory without being dragged against his will into the one of the next day, when Meg had showed up in his yard with her hair newly hacked above her shoulders and dyed black with streaks of blue, her face painted in makeup so thick he fought wondering whether it was covering something up. Dragging on a cigarette he’d never seen her smoke before, she told him how she’d been wrong. Someone had seen them at the river. Someone who’d told her father. Without looking at his face, she told him how her own father had called her a whore. She played with the strands of her ruined hair as she said it, as if she were putting on a costume. “Might as well be what he thinks I am, huh?” She’d turned away quickly, but not quickly enough to stop him from seeing the tear slide down her painted cheek. It was the first time he’d ever seen Meg cry. In fact, until this night, hearing her sobs drift across the alley, it had been the only time.


	4. Chapter 4

           Cas never did get to sleep. When the early light started to creep across his ceiling, he rolled out of bed and pulled clothes on, heading downstairs to the kitchen. There was still coffee in the pot from the previous day, but he dumped it back into the top of the machine with a fresh scoop of grounds and let it brew with that instead of water, hoping it would be strong enough to keep him awake through the working day. The coffee brewed thick and sludgy, but the smell of the burnt beans let Cas know it would be powerful. He held his nose and gulped it down before walking out to his scooter.

            As he grabbed his helmet off the handlebars, he heard a rustling in the yard next to him. Turning toward the sound, he spotted Meg. She seemed to be hurrying toward her house as if hoping he wouldn’t see her, but Cas was sure they both knew it was too late. “Meg!” he called out.

            She turned toward him, pushing back the dark hair that had been hanging, uncombed and stringy, in front of her face. Her eyes were rimmed in dark red, her cheeks puffy. Cas wondered if she’d slept, either. She was wearing a baggy, moth-eaten sweater and a pair of pajama bottoms instead of her work uniform. “Oh, hey Cas,” she said. Her voice sounded too bright. She seemed to be looking anywhere but at his face.

            “No scrubs,” he said. Meg worked at the nursing home downtown; she usually wore bright blue scrubs. Back when they were kids and she’d played her nurse games, Cas had believed her when she swore she’d be a real nurse someday. They were young enough then to believe that they could grow up to be whatever they wanted. She’d settled for a job as an aide in the senior tower, but she seemed to like the work. Sometimes she’d come home with faded flowers the old men gave her, her beauty reminding them of someone they’d known at some point before Meg was born. She never quite had the heart to refuse them.

            She glanced down. “Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to work today. Not feeling too good.”

            Cas nodded as he mounted his scooter. Something told him there was more to the story, and there was a time when Meg would have told him. Back before the river, they never had any secrets from each other. But now he barely knew anything about her life, and she didn’t seem to mind keeping it that way. Pulling out of the driveway, he took a last glance behind him and saw Meg drop to her knees and retch under her father’s scraggly rosebushes. His gut flipped, and in a split-second decision, he made a U-turn and rode his scooter up onto Meg’s lawn.

            “Cas!” she gasped, wiping her mouth and rolling back onto her heels. “What are you doing?”

            “You’re sick.”

            “I’m fine.”

            Cas’s eyes wandered over to the bush, where there was more than one pile of vomit. He wondered if that was why she’d come out here in the first place. He swung his legs off the scooter and stepped over to her, extending his arm. “Come on.”

            Meg stared up at him. “You have to get to work.”

            “I’ll call Dean, tell him I can’t make it in. He’ll understand.”

            Meg slowly took hold of Cas’s elbow and let him lift her to her feet, guiding her towards his house. She looked over her shoulder at his scooter. “What about…?”

            “I’ll move it once I get you settled.”

            He led her into living room and helped her to lie down on the couch, pulling an afghan over her legs. While she reclined on the sofa, he went into the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards until he found a small metal basin. “Here,” he said, walking back to the living room to hand it to Meg. “If you need to throw up again, you can use this.” She gave him a peculiar look, but didn’t say anything. “I’m going to go make you some tea.”

            “Really, Cas, I’m fine,” she called as he disappeared into the kitchen again. He searched for a teapot and didn’t find one, so he dumped out the double-strength coffee and used the machine to brew a pot of water with one of his mother’s teabags. When he brought it to her, she shifted into a half-sitting position and wrapped her arms around the mug with a small smile. “Why are you doing all this?” she asked.

            Cas shrugged as he perched on the arm of the armchair opposite her. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I’m just…concerned, is all.”

            “It’s sweet,” Meg said before sipping the tea. “I’ll be okay. I just can’t let my dad see.”

            “Why not? Why would he be upset about you being sick?” Azazel Masters was a dick, no question, but Cas couldn’t imagine him being _that_ harsh. “Everyone gets sick, Meg.”

            She stared at him. “I’m not that kind of sick.”

            Cas stared back. He sensed there was a meaning here he was supposed to catch, something she was trying to say without saying it. As usual, it was just beyond his grasp. Meg shook her head. “Never mind,” she said.

            Cas looked away. “I’m gonna…go…move my scooter,” he said. Meg nodded. Cas walked out the front door and crossed the yard to where he’d parked, climbed on and revved his engine back to life. As he backed out of Meg’s yard and onto the street, he heard a familiar _thud_ on her side of the fence that made his heart sink. Shaking his head, he steered the scooter around the back of his house and parked. “Meg?” he called as he walked back inside. There was no answer. He hadn’t expected one.

            On the coffee table next to the couch sat a drained mug and a note scribbled on a piece of scrap paper. He picked it up. “Thanks, Cas,” he read out loud. A little heart drawn beneath his name. And an empty couch.


	5. Chapter 5

Cas thought about skipping out of work anyway. He could’ve ridden his scooter up and down the roads until the knot in his gut unwound and he felt more human again. He wasn’t sure what bothered him more: that something was clearly wrong with Meg, or that she didn’t trust him enough to tell him what it was or let him help her. He knew the second thought was selfish. He knew he should only want her to be okay, whether it was with or without his help. But he missed all the nights they’d spent close as twins, whispering all their secrets to each other. There was a time when he would have been the first to know. When if she’d thought anyone could help her, it would be him.

            Ultimately, he decided just going to work would be the better idea. Maybe it would keep his mind off of all of it for a few hours, at least. He sighed and steered his scooter in the direction of the new subdivision his construction company was building, hitting his boss’s number on speed dial to let him know he’d be there after all.

            Cas never would have pictured himself working in construction, but the Winchester brothers, classmates of his from high school who’d been the closest thing he’d had to friends besides Meg, had gone straight from school into building for their father’s company, and Sam, the younger brother who was in Cas’s graduating class, had persuaded Cas to come and work there too. Cas could tell that construction wasn’t what Sam really wanted to do, but he felt the pressure to go into the family business and didn’t really feel like he had a choice. Maybe he wanted Cas to work there too so at least he’d have an ally; his older brother Dean, who was clearly Sam’s best friend, was also a dutiful son who took to the business like a fish to water. In fact, in the five years between picking up the hammer on the day after his graduation and answering the call on the day that Cas found himself half a day late to his job after trying to nurse Meg, Dean had risen through the ranks and was now the foreman on their site.

            “Missed you this morning,” Dean called out with a grin, hoisting a beam of wood over his shoulder and waving to Cas with his free hand.

            “Sorry,” Cas said, scrambling to his side to help him lift it into place. “I was… helping a friend.” He realized how dumb that sounded. Dean knew him well enough to know he didn’t really have any friends.

            “A friend, huh?” Dean raised his eyebrow. “Look, if you got some action last night and didn’t wanna kick her out early, you can tell me. I’ll understand.”

            Cas nearly dropped his end of the beam, feeling heat creep up his neck and cheeks. “No,” he stammered. “Uh, it was nothing like that.”

            “Dean, leave ‘im alone,” Sam called from behind them, where he was pushing a wheelbarrow filled with tools and smaller pieces of lumber. “Don’t be a dick.”

            Cas knew Sam meant well, but somehow it made him feel worse. “Uh, it was my neighbor,” he said. “Meg Masters.” He knew that they knew who Meg was, but they hadn’t exactly been friends in school. Maybe by naming her, Cas could get them to drop the whole subject.

            Instead, he saw them both look at him in a way that made him wish he’d never opened his mouth. It was something a little too close to pity, a little too much like they knew exactly how he felt about Meg. And maybe a little like they knew something he didn’t.

            “What?” he said finally, his frustration scraping out in his voice. “What is it that everyone seems to know but me?”

            Sam spoke slowly, as if carefully considering his words. “I don’t _know_ anything, Cas,” he said. “I just… I’ve _heard_ things.”

            “What kind of things?”

            “Maybe you should ask her.”

            Cas nodded, hoping to save as much face as he could by pretending that he could ask Meg anything these days and get a straight answer. He changed the subject as quickly as he could and went about the rest of the day, determined not to mention Meg again.


	6. Chapter 6

          The next weeks passed smoothly, Cas going through the motions of his life almost as if he was in a trance. He glimpsed Meg sometimes, in her yard or in her window, but she always disappeared before he had the chance to call to her. One night he slipped out into the space between their windows, staring up at the golden light framed by hers. He thought he caught slight movements from the corners of his eyes, but from the angle at which he was standing, he couldn’t see much. He bent down to the ground and scooped up a handful of pebbles, remembering how he used to use them to signal to Meg years ago. His body remembered the anticipation as if it had lived in his muscles all those years – the waiting to see her shadow in the window, to feel her grab his hand and run away with him.

            Once, they’d found the frame of a house someone had started building near their neighborhood, in a place where any houses left were boarded up and grown over with weeds. This house was newer, but weathered enough that it was clear whoever had started building it had abandoned the idea, and the framework. “Who would build a new house _here_?” Meg had mused as they looked up at it. “Everyone here is just trying to leave.”

            “I don’t know,” Cas had said.

            “You want to go inside?” Meg quirked her eyebrow in that way that always meant she was up to something.

            “It doesn’t look very sturdy…”

            “And we’re not very big. Come on.”

            They’d climbed inside and tiptoed over the sagging plywood floors until they were sure they could hold their weight. The house was half-finished but completely empty, and Meg twirled through pointing out all the things she’d build in if she were finishing it. “I want a skylight, and a window seat, and one of those porches with the screen where you can hang a big swing,” she was saying, as Cas surveyed the beams around them to make sure nothing was about to topple in on them.

            Sitting cross-legged on the half-floor stretching over part of what would have been the top level, Meg had looked into Cas’s eyes, her face growing serious. “What if we really did it?” she asked. “Ran away and lived here? We could finish building this house, make it into our own place. I bet we could learn how.” Cas had nodded, even though he knew even then they’d never really do it.

            A few weeks later, there was a fire out by the highway and that house burned down, along with all the ruined ones around it. The night after it happened was the night that Cas and Meg snuck into the woods and she kissed him like she meant it. Maybe she had been trying to find another way of running, he thought now. He could still feel the electricity of her touch, knew without a doubt that while Meg was running away from everything, all of his running had been toward her.

           Cas knew, as he stood there, twenty years old with a handful of pebbles smudging his palms as dirty as a child’s, that some part of him had been chasing that feeling ever since that night, and had never found it again. Slowly, he opened his fingers and let the gravel and dirt sieve through.


	7. Chapter 7

        After a while, Cas saw Meg going to work again. She still scurried out of the yard and to Ruby’s waiting car or the bus stop down the block, but she did so dressed in her work scrubs, even though most days she wore that ratty, baggy sweater on top despite the summer heat. One day, as Cas was leaving for work, he felt that familiar stomach clench he’d come to associate with a decision to do something that might be stupid, and he turned out of his driveway in the opposite direction of work, toward the bus stop where Meg stood.

       “Cas?” she asked as he scraped to a stop beside her.

       “Hop on,” he said.

       “What?”

       “Come on, we’re both heading to work, I pass yours on my way. I’ll give you a ride.”

       “Cas….”

       “Like old times.” He tried to keep his voice from sounding pleading. He wasn’t sure he’d succeeded.

       Meg moved toward him, slowly, her face unsmiling but not unfriendly. Cas thought she looked much healthier than she had when he’d seen her last, at least – her face seemed fuller, her curves, what he could see of them under the awful sweater, more pronounced. She climbed on behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. Her body felt different against his than he remembered; their shapes didn’t seem to fit together the same way. Then again, it had been a long time since they’d ridden like this.

       Cas drove them over the steep bridge that arched over the railroad tracks that separated their neighborhood from downtown, and he felt Meg’s arms tighten on him at the apex of the bridge. It was too soon that they pulled up in front of the senior tower and they loosened again, almost immediately, and he felt the loss of warmth as her body leaned away from him on the scooter seat.

       “Thanks,” she said, climbing off and turning toward the building’s sliding glass doors. As if reconsidering, she quickly turned around and dropped a kiss on his cheek. Then, just as fast, she moved for the doors again.

       “Meg,” he called, and she turned around. “I’ll come back and pick you up tonight.” She nodded shortly, then disappeared through the doors.


	8. Chapter 8

      When Cas came back, near the end of Meg’s shift and two hours past the end of his, he drifted up to the curb and let the scooter idle there, feeling it rumble under him with the weight of the miles he’d driven since he got off, trying to sort out his thoughts. He almost didn’t register the car pulling up behind him, despite its clanging engine, but he definitely heard the door slam and Ruby’s voice call his name.

      He looked up to see her standing there, a lit cigarette dangling between her fingers and a defiant expression on her face.

      “Cas, what are you doing?”

      “I told Meg I’d pick her up…”

      “Not that.” Ruby rolled her eyes. “All of this. This knight-in-shining armor routine. You think she needs that right now? From you, the virgin next door?”

      Cas could barely take in the fact that she was trying to insult him. The clouded pieces were drifting in front of his eyes, trying to solve a puzzle he still didn’t quite comprehend. “What are you talking about?”

      Ruby crossed the curb and stepped down next to Cas. “Why are you trying so hard to be in Meg’s life now?”

      Cas swallowed. “Because she’s my friend. She’s always been my friend. And I want to help her. I don’t know what’s going on exactly, but I think she’s sick or something and…”

     “She’s not _sick_ ,” Ruby snapped. “She’s pregnant.”

      Cas felt his jaw slacken just as the doors slid open to reveal Meg, standing with her lunch sack in one hand and the sweater in the other. Dressed in only her scrubs, Cas could see the undeniable round bulge of her belly. He thought of the way she’d angled her body away from him and how when they had touched, it had felt different. Realized how the sweater had been camouflage.

      From the stricken expression on Meg’s face, he realized that she knew he knew. He tried to call out to her, but before the words could leave his lips she had hopped into Ruby’s car and closed the door against him. Through a crack in her window, Ruby yelled “Go home, Cas! This has nothing to do with you.” Then she rolled the window the rest of the way up and peeled out, her car smoking and clanking as it left Cas’s stationary scooter in the dust. It took him a long time to pull himself together enough to put the scooter into gear and steer it towards home, but by that time Meg was long gone in Ruby’s car and couldn’t see him. The whole ride home, he tried to convince himself it was a light rain making his cheeks wet, despite the cloudless, perfectly black sky.


	9. Chapter 9

            When he pulled up to his house, he could tell Meg was home. Her light was on. Ruby’s car was gone. Breathing deeply, he slipped into the crack between their houses again and snagged another handful of pebbles. This time, before he could talk himself out of it, he reeled his arm back and released them against her window. They hit the glass like a rain of hailstones. Cas froze as a dark shape passed in front of the window, and then the sash swung up. “Cas, what the hell?” Meg hissed down at him.

            Cas tried to think of something to say, something that would make her understand, but he couldn’t think of anything. Finally he just said “Come down.” His voice sounded small, pleading, like they were still kids, and he hated it. He shuddered, but Meg didn’t seem to notice.

            Instead, she laughed from her window, a sardonic little snort of a laugh, and said “What, Cas, should I slide down the tree? I’m not really in shape for that right now.” She glanced down at her body, then back out at him.

            “Just come through the back door,” he said. “If your dad’s up just say you need to go for a walk or something.”

            She sighed, glancing over her shoulder. “Meet me out back in five minutes,” she said, and gingerly lowered the sash.

            When she cracked open the back door and slipped out into the yard, Meg was wearing the sweater again. Cas gestured toward it. “You have to be roasting in that thing.” Meg glanced down and grimaced. “It’s just me,” Cas said. “You don’t have to worry about what I think.” She pulled the sweater over her head and stuffed it behind a bush next to the door.

            “Does he still not know?” Cas asked, nodding over his shoulder in the direction of the house as they walked away from it, toward the woods.

            “Oh, he knows,” Meg said. “But he’s being such a dick about it, I keep hoping if I hide it as much as I can he won’t get worse. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.” They slipped through the same gap in the trees they had always used when they were younger. It was a little more overgrown now from years of disuse, but still there, almost as if it had been waiting for them to come back. Inside the cocoon of branches, Cas sat down on the carpet of dead leaves, then, as an afterthought, stripped off his T-shirt and spread it down on the ground beside him. Meg gave him a strange look but let him reach his arms out to her and help her down onto the shirt.

            “I’m – I’m not trying to suggest anything,” Cas stammered, crossing his arms over his bare chest. “I was just trying to be a gentleman.”

            Meg smiled. “And you are,” she said. She moved as if she were going to lean closer to him, but then seemed to change her mind and instead lay back on the ground, her hair fanning out over the leaves. Cas lay down too, rolling onto his side and propping himself up on one elbow.

            “Meg,” he swallowed, trying to push the words out before he lost his nerve. “Are you safe?”

            “Yeah, why would you ask that?” she said, he thought, maybe a little too quickly.

            “I mean, you said your father…”

            “He’s not, like, _beating_ me or anything. God, Cas!”

            “I’m – I’m sorry.”

            She sighed. “No, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have snapped like that. He just keeps telling me he’s gonna kick me out unless I marry the guy.”

            Cas tried to breathe normally, to keep her from noticing the coil of his body, the way he felt like he’d just been punched in the gut. “Do you want to?”

            “Wouldn’t matter if I did. He’s already married.”

            “Meg!”

            “Well, it’s not like I knew that at the time!”

            “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

            “He was just some guy. Who told me I was pretty on a night when I really needed to hear that.” Cas stared, wondering how Meg could ever not know that she was absolutely beautiful. “I didn’t really know anything about him until I flunked the rabbit test and tried to track him down. I find a number for him and call, and his _wife_ answers.” She shuddered. “Asks me who I am and what I’m doing calling her husband’s phone. I just hung up.”

            “Why didn’t you tell me? Meg, I could have helped.”

            “I know, and I knew you would have,” she said. “But it’s my mess. I’m tired of letting you and every other good person I meet clean up after me. I start to feel like I’ll mess you up, too.”

            “I would never feel that way.”

            “Maybe you wouldn’t, but I would.” She rolled over to face him. Lying on her side, her belly looked even bigger, bowing out toward him with a half-moon of pale skin exposed where her top had ridden up. “Anyway, it’s not a big deal. I’ll deal with it. I mean, I just turned twenty. So I’m not a teen mom. I’m just… a mom, who has to do it by herself and maybe wasn’t really ready, but there are a lot of those. I’m not special.”

            “You are,” Cas said softly.

            “Hm?”

            He shook his head. “Never mind.” He knew that wasn’t what she’d meant, and he wasn’t sure what good it would do now to say it.

            “You know,” Meg said, playing with a leaf on the ground in front of her, “I’ve kind of missed this.” She looked up at him. “You know, just being out here with you, talking. I didn’t know I missed it. But I did. You know how you can miss something without realizing it?”

            Cas nodded. “If your dad kicks you out, you could come live with me,” he blurted.

            She laughed. “What, in your mom’s attic?”

            “No, I mean, we could get a place or something. Like, we could be roommates. I could help you with the baby.”

            “Why would you want to do that?”

            “Because – because you’re my friend.”

            “I haven’t been a very good one lately.”

            “I know.” Cas realized how that sounded, and shook his head. “I mean… I know we haven’t been as close as we used to be. But… I miss it. Too.”

            Meg nodded. “I’ll figure something out,” she said. “But listen, I’m really glad I’ve got you on my side right now.”

            “You always will,” he said. She climbed up off the ground and balled up his shirt, tossing it back at him so it hit him in the chest. It reminded him of how she used to be playful with him. For the first time all night – the first time he could even remember – he saw her really smile.

            “I know,” she said. “Goober.” Then she turned and walked back to her house, the fading moonlight trailing her until she had slipped through the door and out of his sight.


	10. Chapter 10

            The next day at work, Cas could barely keep his mind on what he was doing. He floated through his tasks, completely them serviceably, but it was soon apparent that the others could tell his mind was elsewhere. At lunch break, he took his peanut butter sandwich and climbed the stairs in the open frame of the house they were working on, sat on the ledge of the upper floor with his legs dangling out into the air. As he bit into the sandwich, Sam hoisted himself up onto the bare plywood floor and sat beside him. “Little risky sitting up here,” he remarked.

            Cas shrugged. “You’re doing it.”

            “ _Now_ , smart-ass.” Sam cuffed him lightly on the arm, but he was smiling. “What’s got you off in your own little world today, Cas? Anything you wanna talk about?”

            “Not really,” Cas said. “I was just thinking about…”

            “Meg?”

            “Is it that obvious?”

            Sam sighed and stretched his long legs over the edge. “I know the two of y’all have some kind of history, and I know you care a lot about her. But she’s… going through a lot right now.”

            “I know,” Cas said, feeling slightly annoyed. There was something about the way people talked to him about Meg, as if he didn’t know what she was going through, or wouldn’t be able to handle hearing people talk about it. “I know all about it.”

            “You do.” Sam said it without a rising inflection in his voice, but the expression on his face – wide eyes, raised brows – seemed to indicate that he was asking a question anyway.

            “I do. And I want to help her.” He took another bite. “ _Someone_ should do right by her. She deserves that.”

            “But Cas,” Sam said slowly, as if choosing his words carefully, “this isn’t your fault.”

            “I know,” Cas replied. “But… I wish it was.” Sam’s face was sympathetic, but he didn’t say anything. Cas knew he couldn’t take the words back. It was true though. He wanted to help Meg. He wanted to be there for her like any friend would. But that wasn’t everything. In spite of it all, he still wanted to be with her.


	11. Chapter 11

            Cas started hatching his stupid plan that night. He called it his stupid plan, once he realized he was even planning, just to remind himself that he could never actually do it. At first, it didn’t even feel like a plan. It just felt like adding little things to the rhythm of his life that hadn’t been there before, things like scanning the classifieds for cheap starter apartments. Drifting through the pawn shop after work looking at secondhand rings. The day he came closest to buying one, small but with just enough sparkle to stand out, he left and drove to the mall instead, came home with a yellow baby onesie printed with tiny giraffes. He tossed rocks against Meg’s window that night, ducked around to the back door before she could open it. He thought of himself handing her the garment with the same naked hope with which he would have handed her a ring, and he couldn’t do it. He folded it neatly and placed it on her doorstep, then hopped the fence before she could open the door. He heard her calling his name, but stayed there with his back pressed to the fence until he heard her footsteps trail back into the house, the door closing and latching behind her.

            That same ring was still there each time he went back, though. Each time that he talked himself out of buying it, he bought another present for the baby. Each time he went to give it to her, he chickened out and left it outside. But still he found himself, day after day, standing in front of that smudged glass case, staring at it. Finally the day came when he asked the dealer to let him hold it. It felt so delicate in his palm, lighter than he expected, but hard and solid at the same time. He held it to his own fingers, trying to imagine the size of Meg’s by comparison, measuring whether he thought it would fit. He nearly handed it back, but something stopped him. Instead, he handed a wad of crumpled bills to the dealer and shoved the ring deep down into his pocket. He knew he wouldn’t give it to her. Not face to face, and not by leaving it by her door. Not tonight, and maybe not ever. But something told him he needed to have it.

            He carried it with him every day, sometimes reaching into his pocket to rub against the small box and feel the shape of it, sometimes sneaking the box out to look at the silvery loop of metal and the tiny glint of diamond. Always tucking it back away quickly before anyone could see it. Always pretending his pockets were empty when anyone was around.

            Then there was the night he left work and found himself driving, without thinking, not in the direction of home or even an open road outside town where he could think but straight into the heart of downtown, up to the foot of the tower. He could wait there until Meg got off work, he thought. Or he could drive away and pretend nothing ever happened. What he _couldn’t_ do, in the barest physical sense, was sit there on his parked scooter. His body felt too jittery; his legs twitched and his hands fidgeted with anything within reach. He dismounted and walked into the lobby, getting into the elevator just because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He started pushing buttons at random, making bets with himself like he was plucking petals off of a daisy. _She loves me, she loves me not. If nobody gets on at the third floor, I’ll ask her. If three people get on at the fifth floor, she’ll say yes._

            He did this for so long he lost track of time and of how many times he’d visited each floor, when the sixth-floor light dinged on its own and the elevator carried him there, where the doors opened to Meg standing in her scrubs, waiting. “Cas!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

            “I, uh, came to meet you.” Cas’s fingers curled around the box in his pocket, the feeling of his fingers stroking it giving him a sense of calm. He knew he couldn’t say anything about it, though – not here. Not now. “Do you maybe wanna go for a ride with me?”

            Meg stuck her hands into her scrub pockets. “Oh… I dunno, Cas, it’s kinda late…”

            _So there it is then._ “It’s okay,” Cas said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “I just really wanted to show you something. Maybe another time?”

            “Aw, what the hell. I’m off tomorrow.” Meg grinned at him. “Let’s go.”

            “Really?”

            “Yeah. I’m a sucker for surprises.”

            When they reached Cas’s scooter, Meg stopped. “Are you sure I’ll still fit on that thing?”

            “’Course you will,” Cas answered, though he wasn’t honestly sure. It seemed like every time he saw her, she looked bigger than she had the day before, and now she was bursting out of her scrubs from every angle. It took a little effort for her to hoist herself onto the seat and get situated, but once she leaned into Cas’s back, they fit together as perfectly as ever. He was convinced there was no shape her body to take that wouldn’t fit seamlessly into his, and that was maybe as close to believing that people could be meant for each other as he would ever admit to being.

            “So, where are we going?” Meg asked as Cas steered onto the street.

            “It’s a surprise,” he said, because he hadn’t actually thought of a place to take her yet. “I thought you liked surprises.”

            “Like ‘em even better when I know what they are.”

            “But that’s not…” Meg was laughing too hard for Cas to argue, so he just joined in, laughing with her as they zipped down the road. And suddenly, he knew exactly where they should go.


	12. Chapter 12

            “Close your eyes,” Cas whispered as they neared their destination.

            “Cas, it’s dark!”

            “Close them anyway.”

            “Okay, they’re closed.”

            “Good.”

            “I could be cheating, you know. I’m behind you.”

            “Meg!”

            “I’m not cheating! I’m not cheating!”

            Cas pulled up into the subdivision his crew was building, coasted all the way back to the end of the farthest cul de sac from the street. The house there was nearly finished except it was missing its ceiling and most of its walls, open to the air and the stars in the deep black night. When they climbed off the scooter, Cas slipped behind Meg and clasped his hands over her eyes. “I told you I wouldn’t cheat!” she protested.

            “Just follow me.” Cas led her up the walk and onto the porch, stopping in front of the hole where the front door would soon be and lowering his hands. “Open them.”

            “Cas, what is this? Isn’t this one of the houses y’all are building?”

            “This could be our house.” Cas watched Meg’s expression change, and saw the moment when she realized she knew the script. They’d done this before. A hulk of half-built house out on the highway, abandoned for the day. Two kids running through the raw-lumber halls, naming each room for the wildest things they could imagine putting there. “This is the living room,” he said as they stepped into the front room. “The couch can go right there.”

            He turned to watch Meg step into the room behind him. “Meg! You’re standing on the couch!”

            “Am I?” Meg smirked. “Well, what fun is having your own house if you can’t jump on the furniture?” She bounced in place on the floor, shaking loose a swirl of sawdust.

            “This could be your study,” Cas went on, pointing to a cozy room under the stairs. “When you go to nursing school, you can do your studying in there.”

            Meg’s smile faded. “You really think I’ll still do all that, Cas?” she asked softly. “Go to school? Be a real nurse?”

            Cas shrugged. “Sure, why not?” He bolted for the stairs. “Chase me!”

            Meg ran behind him, laughing. “Hey, no fair! I got an excuse to be slow!”

            “Oh well,” Cas taunted as he climbed the bare rungs. Meg trailed at his heels to the open upper floor where they could see the stars dance across the plywood and two-by-fours. “Over there is the nursery,” he said, gesturing to a small attic room framed by descending eaves. “The baby will love it. We’ll decorate it with… well, whatever the kid likes. Lots of it! And this…” he spun a circle into the big open room at the front of the house. “This would be our room.”

            “ _Ours?_ ” Meg quirked an eyebrow at him.

            Cas looked down at the floor. “I mean – I…”

            Suddenly, Meg grabbed Cas by his collar and leaned in to kiss him. It was soft and hard at the same time, tender but urgent. The first time she’d kissed him on the lips since before junior high, and the only time it had felt this intense. He caught his breath and kissed back.

            He felt the gravity of her body pulling him down to the floor, and he let it happen. Lay there tangling their limbs together in the sawdust, her lips pushing into his and then her hands unbuttoning his shirt, sliding between the fabric and his skin. He fought the urge to hold his breath as more pieces of clothing were tossed to the side, her hands touching him in places, in ways that no hands but his own and hers ever had, exploring him the way they did when they were kids and his body was the only one she’d ever known besides her own, too.

            “Meg,” he breathed, “I’m – I haven’t…”

            “It’s okay,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his chest. He lifted the top of her scrubs over her head, the bottoms already kicked off and balled in a corner. As if by reflex, she crossed her arms over the globe of her belly.

            “No,” Cas said, touching her arms lightly. “Please? Let me see you.” She moved her arms, let him see all of the fullness of her body in the starlight. A girl who’d swallowed the moon. “It’s so beautiful,” he said. “You. Are so beautiful.”

            She ducked her head, let her hair scrape across his skin before she shifted and slid down his body, kissing the soft insides of his thighs, taking him into her mouth. They’d never done _this_ before. It was like nothing he’d ever felt, the soft fluid motion of her mouth on him, and the sensation was overwhelming. “Meg!” he gasped, tangling his fingers in her hair, jerking his hips involuntarily even closer to her.

            Soon, though, it still wasn’t enough. As good as it felt, she was too far away from him, only one part of her touching one part of him. He needed to feel her body against his again. He needed to make the most of this, in case it never happened again. He couldn’t remember a time when some part of him hadn’t wanted this, and he didn’t know what he’d do when it was over.

            He reached for her shoulders, stroking upward in a way that he hoped she knew meant _come here._ She skimmed his body again, this time coming up to meet his face, to kiss him with a foreign taste in her mouth he knew had to be his own. Straddling his hips, taking him in her hand, she pushed her own hips closer in to his until he was inside her. She made a tiny moan while he found he couldn’t make any sound at all. Every nerve in his body was focused on what was happening as she moved her body against his, the friction rising between them, prompting him to move his own body and thrust up to meet her as she ground down on him. Suddenly she made a loud shuddering gasp and he felt her muscles clench tighter around him as she screamed his name and slumped against his shoulder. Then he was coming harder than he ever had and for some reason he couldn’t resist the urge to kiss every part of her he could reach, her face and neck and shoulders, while he stroked her hair and whispered her name over and over.

            They lay there for a long time after, not bothering to untangle or cover their bodies. The night was warm, and even the beads of sweat drying on their skin were pleasantly cool. Cas, for his part, was wondering if he’d ever be able to move his body again. What had just happened to it didn’t seem like something a person could just recover from. As the first lights of dawn began to crack the sky, though, Meg shook his shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “We should probably clear out. There might be, you know, people here soon.”

            Mortified by the thought of his crewmates finding him like this, Cas found the ability to scramble into a sitting position and grab for his clothes. He buttoned his shirt back on, then spotted his pants and yanked them toward him by one leg. There was a small but undeniable _thud_ as the box for the ring tumbled out of his pocket.

            “What was that?” Meg asked.

            Stricken, and sure it showed in his face, Cas searched for a plausible answer and didn’t find one. At least, not before Meg swooped in and snatched the box. With a playful smile on her face, she held it above her head, playing keep-away with him. He grabbed for it, futilely, and she lowered it to eye level and snapped it open. Immediately, her smile disappeared. “Cas,” she said in a hushed voice. “Is this…”

            He looked away, unable to do anything else, knowing that that was his answer.

            “Cas, you don’t have to do this. I mean, it’s sweet. Shit, it’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me. But I don’t need you to save me.”

            “Save you?” Cas shook his head. “No. No, that’s not what I’m trying to do.”

            “Then what is it, Cas?” her voice was gentle, earnest, every hint of teasing gone.

            Finally he looked her in the eye. “I’ve loved you for a really long time,” he said. “Kind of my whole life. I’ve never loved anybody but you. I’m – I’m not sure I _could_.”

            Meg stared at him for a long time. Then, slowly, with that same eyebrow quirk she’d teased him with before, she slid the ring onto her finger. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to.


	13. Chapter 13

            “Dude, are you ready for this?” Sam clapped a hand on Cas’s shoulder.

            “I am… the question is, is your _brother_ ready?” They glanced over to where Dean was pacing, mumbling words to himself, looking out of place in his suit. Cas himself was wearing a borrowed suit that didn’t quite fit him right, standing under the same tree that Meg had taught him to climb when they were children, the one she had climbed down to meet him when they were teenagers. She had been the one who’d insisted on doing this here.

            “I’m sure he’s just… perfecting his craft.”

            “Right.”

            When Cas had broken the news at work that he and Meg were getting married, Sam had immediately volunteered that Dean was an ordained minister. Apparently, he’d gone through a site on the internet that would grant almost anyone the power to perform marriages. “Why would he do that?” Cas asked.

            Sam had shrugged. “Seemed like something that might come in handy.”

            And, for Cas, it did, because they didn’t have a lot of time to find another option. Meg wanted to have the wedding before the baby was born, which at this point only gave them a few weeks. They’d found a small apartment they could move into, and she wanted to move before she had the baby too, but she insisted the wedding had to come first. So Dean had agreed to do them the honors, and all their friends had made miracles in the departments of wardrobe, music, and floral arrangements. The latter were courtesy of Ruby, who, near as Cas could tell, had just cut flowers from various neighbors’ yards in mismatched quantities she thought wouldn’t be missed. Leaning against her crumbling car for a pre-wedding smoke, she’d snagged Cas and said, “I guess I maybe kind of like you now. But if you ever hurt Meg, I’ll kill you.”

            Now, Sam hit the button on a boombox and the music started playing. Everyone turned toward the house as Meg practically floated through the door and across the lawn. Her hair was half piled on top of her head with more of Ruby’s stolen flowers, half falling in curls around her face. “I did her hair, too,” Ruby whispered proudly. Meg’s belly was so big now that nothing could hide it, but she and her friends had managed to convert a high-waisted white dress into something that billowed softly around her extra curves and made her look ethereal and goddess-like.

            She made it to Cas’s side and laced her fingers through his hand, smiling at him. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he said.

            “Positive. Why? You getting cold feet?”

            “Never. But, I mean, I never even actually asked you.”

            “Oh, you did, Cas. You’ve been asking me for months. I just wasn’t listening.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m glad I finally did.”

            Dean cleared his throat. “Um, ladies, and gentlemen,” he said, looking upward as if trying to remember lines from a script, “We are gathered here to…”

            “ _Oh!_ ” Meg doubled over, clutching her stomach, her face twisted into a grimace.

             Dean chuckled. “Come on, I can’t be doing _that_ bad.”

            Meg straightened, catching her breath. “I’m okay,” she said, forcing a smile. “Keep going.”

            “We are gathered here today…”

            “ _Oh!_ Shitfuckpiss.” She punched Cas in the arm, hard.

            “What was that for?”

            “I – I don’t know.”

            “Did it make you feel better?”

            “Yeah, kind of.”

            “Okay, then hit me again.” He turn and offered her the other shoulder.

            “I’m not gonna – _ohhhh!_ ” She slammed her fist into his shoulder, hard enough to knock him backward. “Sam,” she panted. “Get your watch. Count how many minutes until it happens again.”

            Sam nodded, pulling his watch off his wrist and staring intently at the face. When Meg contorted and let out another agonized wail, Sam announced “Three minutes.”

            Meg stared at him. “Three – you have to call 911.”

            “What, seriously?”

            “I’m a nurse, remember? Or I mean, almost one. Kind of. And I know three minutes apart means this baby is coming _right now_!”

            Sam pulled out his cell phone and dialed while Cas held Meg to his chest, petting her hair and rubbing her back. “Ruby,” Meg gasped between contractions, grabbing the would-be maid of honor’s arm. “Go inside. Get my bag out of my room. The black one.” Ruby nodded and ran into the house.

            The ambulance came quickly. The EMTs lifted Meg onto a stretcher, then loaded her into the back while Cas climbed in beside her. “Wait!” Meg called out. Everyone looked up. “Dean,” she said. “You have to come with us.”

            Dean gestured toward his own chest. “Me?” he said. “Why me?”

            “Because. You need to finish marrying us.”

            Dean hopped into the back of the ambulance just before the doors closed and the EMTs pulled away. “Skip all the flowery crap,” Meg murmured to him. “Just get to the important stuff.”

            “Okay,” he said. “Uh, do you, Meg, take Cas to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

            “I do… oh, son of a bitch!”

            “Um, okay, and do you, Cas, take Meg…”

            “I do,” Cas blurted, wincing from how tightly Meg was squeezing his fingers.

            “Then I now pronounce you… married. You can kiss, unless Meg wants to punch you again instead.”

            “Shut up, Dean,” said Meg. She reached up from the stretcher and pulled Cas down for a kiss that lasted a few blissful moments before Meg twisted into another bout of writhing in pain and screaming obscenities.

            When they reached the hospital, Meg’s contractions were so close together, they didn’t seem to have any space between them at all. “We’re taking her straight to delivery,” one of the EMTs told Cas over his shoulder as he heaved the stretcher out of the ambulance. “Check in up front, then come up there.”

            Cas nodded. He drifted numbly to the counter to retrieve a clipboard of paperwork, where the little revelations kept flooring him. Writing his own last name next to Meg’s name. Writing his own name in the space next to it, marked “SPOUSE.” He filled it out as quickly as possible and rushed up to the delivery room, but it was already long over. The nurses told him they’d moved Meg to a room in recovery and he could go see her there.

            From the doorway to the recovery room, Cas could see Meg propped in a bed, holding a bundle in her arms. She looked up to see him and broke into a huge smile, waving him over. “Here she is,” she said, opening the blanket to reveal an impossibly tiny baby in a yellow giraffe-print onesie.

            “You kept it,” Cas marveled, touching the fabric.

            “I kept everything.” She pulled the blanket back farther and stroked the baby’s cheek. “Look at this,” she said. The baby’s eyes fluttered open for a moment. “Her eyes,” said Meg. “So blue. Just like yours.” She smiled. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I could almost swear she was yours.”

            “She is,” Cas said, draping his arms so that one curled around the baby in her blanket, the other resting lightly on Meg’s shoulder. “This is my family. And it’s perfect.”


	14. Chapter 14

 

**Epilogue**

**Five Years Later**

      Cas sat on the front porch of their house, listening to Meg doing something in the kitchen that sounded messy and a bit alarming. He made a mental note to go in and check on her in a minute. But right now, it felt too good to be sitting right where he was. Besides, he needed to be there when the bus pulled up.

      The house wasn’t the one they’d chased the stars in that night, but it did have a study, where Meg had spent years doing her nursing homework between shifts while Cas tended to the baby, until she’d finally earned her license and skipped beaming across the stage to retrieve it. It had had a few couches, actually – Meg made good on her promise to jump on the furniture, and that meant it didn’t always last very long. Once, on a particularly fun night of doing more than jumping, they’d broken one together – along with two lamps and an end table. The house had even had a nursery, which had been converted into Claire’s “big-girl room” once she outgrew it. And it had a bedroom, upstairs, with a skylight that let the stars in to their bed every night. As soon as they’d seen it, they’d known it was theirs.

      Now, from the porch, Cas heard the rumble of a diesel engine and the hiss of air brakes, and looked up to see the big yellow school bus pull up in front of their house. Claire bounded down the steps, eager to tell them about her first day at kindergarten. “Daddy, look!” she yelled, holding out a piece of construction paper. “I made our family!” Cas looked at the crude crayon drawing of three figures in front of a lopsided house, and felt his heart surge. He pulled her in for a hug, then said, “Why don’t you go show Mommy, then you can put your school things up and go play?”

     Claire ran into the house, and a few moments later Cas could hear Meg’s delighted squeals mixing with hers. A few more minutes, and Claire ran back out, seeking out her friends in the neighborhood to play. Cas felt Meg’s body slide up behind his and lower to the porch beside him. She draped an arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder. “We did pretty good, didn’t we?” she asked, watching Claire and her friends run and play in the yard.

     “Yeah,” said Cas. “I think we did.”

     “Well,” said Meg, sliding something across their laps for Cas to see. He looked down at the small white plastic stick, two bright pink lines in the center. “You ready to do it all again?”


	15. Chapter 15




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